Advanced seminar: Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur und Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur - ’I Dwell in Possibility’: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman - Details
Advanced seminar: Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur und Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur - ’I Dwell in Possibility’: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman - Details
Advanced seminar: Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur und Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur - ’I Dwell in Possibility’: The Poetry of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman
Advanced seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date
Tuesday, 11.10.2011 18:00 - 19:30
Studiengänge (für)
MA [neu] Themen, Motive, Autoren der englischsprachigen Literatur;
LA [modularisiert] (Vertiefungsmodul: Themen, Genres, Epochen der amerikanischen Literatur);
LA [alt], MA [alt], D [alt] [wahlobl.]
In this course we will study two major 19th-century American poets who wrote startling poetry that broke with the literary and social conventions of their times and opened up new formal and thematic possibilities for later writers. While these two poets lived at the same time in the same country, they never met—and if they had, they probably would have thought the other an embarrassment. For their poetry reveals quite different sensibilities and poetics. While Whitman unfolds a sensuous vision of radical democracy in his work, Dickinson’s poems probe the limits of consciousness and language. While Whitman writes expansive free verse full of detail and elaboration, Dickinson composes concise lyrical riddles that may jolt us into an awareness of the workings of language and the mind.
Reading their poetry side by side, then, will offer us the opportunity to ponder two very distinct responses to U.S. American literary traditions (especially romanticism) and to the social, political, and philosophical underpinnings of 19th-century U.S. American culture. We will also explore the tumultuous publishing and reception history of these authors by using the online archives that scholars have recently created, such as the Dickinson Electronic Archives and the Whitman Hypertext Archive. Our study of Dickinson’s and Whitman’s work and of some of the contemporary poets influenced by their poetics, such as Alan Ginsberg and Adrienne Rich, will be geared to remind you that reading poetry can be fun—delicious and thought-provoking.
Required Books:
Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems. Ed. Thomas H. Johnson. Back Bay Book, 1976.
Whitman, Walt. The Complete Poems. Ed. Francis Murphy. Penguin Classics, 1990.
A course reader with secondary texts will be available at the beginning of the semester.
Admission settings
The course is part of admission "Anmeldung gesperrt (global)".
